Crime lab returns backlogged evidence

The Canton-Stark County Crime Lab is down to three full-time employees

Matthew Rink CantonRep.com staff writer @mrinkREP

The Canton-Stark County Crime Lab began returning untested evidence to local law enforcement agencies Tuesday in an effort to ease the strain on its depleted staff.

The lab, which has been shedding employees throughout the year, soon will be down to three full-time and two part-time employees.

Evidence submitted on or before Oct. 1 — but not yet tested — will be returned to the agencies and then transferred to another lab, likely the state-run Bureau of Criminal Investigation. More than 2,000 submissions are being returned.

Also, the lab will suspend fingerprint and firearm analysis until it can hire and train two new criminalists to do the work. The Canton Civil Service Commission has been asked to approved job descriptions at its meeting Friday. The current firearm and fingerprint analyst is leaving in weeks. The crime lab has already stopped analyzing DNA.

Stark County Commissioner Thomas Bernabei, executive director of the Stark Council of Governments, said the moves are intended to stabilize the lab immediately, while officials continue to look at how to restructure the lab for the future. SCOG, a collaboration of all Stark County local governments, funds and, as of September, oversees the lab.

"This is an effort to provide breathing room to the lab staff and to allow agencies awaiting the testing of backlogged evidence to get the evidence tested and their cases closed out," he said.

Evidence will be returned to large departments, like the Canton Police Department, on a schedule so that property officers for those agencies are not overburdened.

CHALLENGES

Bernabei would not speculate on what might occur if there is more staff turnover. Staffing has declined this year as the lab has wrestled with changes in leadership, a growing backlog, particularly in the DNA/biology division, and a decline in funding.

The DNA backlog, which was not necessarily created because of a lack of personnel, led SCOG to close the DNA/biology division earlier this year. Most police departments now submit evidence for DNA testing to BCI, which has been able to reduce its turnaround times over the last two years because of additional staffing.

Suspending work in the firearms and fingerprints division is due, in part, to the firing, rehiring and eventual resignation of analyst Michael Short. Short was fired in 2012 amid accusations of falsified documents but later reinstated. He agreed to resign as part of a settlement after a more thorough investigation of his work. The division will lose its only other employee when he leaves for a job with BCI later this year.

"Our level of expertise is going to be limited at this time," Bernabei told fellow members of SCOG's executive committee Tuesday.

Michele Foster, who is serving as interim director, said the lab will continue alcohol and drug analysis.

"We felt we could still take on the chemistry – the drug evidence – as well as the alcohol analysis," she said. "As we get more staff trained we can take on other disciplines."

LAB'S FUTURE

The executive committee of SCOG approved on Tuesday a crime lab budget of $709,000 for 2014. Two years ago, the lab was operating with $1.1 million. A reduction in state-issued Local Government Funds, which is SCOG's sole funding source, has hampered operations.

Restructuring the lab will include the hiring of a permanent director, an assistant director and filling a newly created position of property manager/agency liaison.

Foster was promoted from quality control manager in February, when then-director Rick Perez resigned after a week on the job over questions about his qualifications. The lab has not had a permanent director since Robert Budgake, who was fired along with 30 other city of Canton employees in 2012 as part of the retire-rehire incident.

SCOG has not yet advertised the job.

Bernabei said the property manager would create "one-stop shopping" for police departments, coordinating all evidence submitted for testing, including the evidence that would inevitably be transferred to BCI. The idea is to reduce the number of trips agencies are making to BCI's offices in Richfield. A property manager would also decide if other evidence needs to be transferred based on things like workload of the lab staff.

"We're all committed to the maintenance of the crime lab in Stark County," Bernabei said. "The courts, the prosecutor and law enforcement has been relatively unanimous in their desire about seeing the crime lab continue."

Reach Matthew at 330-580-8527 or

matthew.rink@cantonrep.com.

On Twitter: @mrinkREP

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